Half Marathon, Baby

6 easy-ish, 41:40

fartlek day with jake: 3x4min on, 4 min off (off being regular run pace, not slower than 8-min)

pace at half-mile for first and third (and probably second, but we didn't get to start at a half-mile marker for that one) was under 2:40; that's sub 5:20 pace for 4 min intervals XD... pro lol.. anyway, the first was hard, wasn't quite warm, but the other two were decent.

probably going to double on saturday instead of do one long run so that the Sunday race isn't totally screwed... originally the two days were reversed, but because of the timing of the public race we made the change...

just got the half-marathon plan from my HS coach; much more distance-oriented than what i'm doing now, which is probably good. poor jake will have to run the workouts by himself after this week prolly lol (as will i)

supposed to be easy with hills, didn't have time for hills though because of traffic coming home and dinner plans. ended up running it a little fast too.. i'm tired today, but that's just because of a lack of sleep. Friday is off, get to recoup

AM: 8 easy, nice weather, light rain

PM: 4, easy again

race tomorrow morning!

2 mile warmup, race, 2 mile cooldown

i did not feel good today lol, but it turned out alright. twice during the race i thought i was going to poop myself or something, really think i could have done better without the bowel issues. either way, pretty tough week, 12 miles yesterday, i'm definitely happy with the time.

edit: official results are up, the rando kid that outkicked Jake and I turned out not to be registered... 4th overall! 2nd in age division since Derek (the other guy I ran it with) is 20 and the divisions were 14-19, 20-24! Derek, Jake, and I took 2, 3, and 4 overall haha

supposed to be easy, but we (jake and I) picked it up because somehow we felt kinda good. not loose, but decent. 6:55 average, 6:46 average second half... basically a little over 28 min going out and 27:16 or something coming back lol, rawr.. tomorrow is supposed to be one of those 7 steady days where we go like 6:30 or something, but we're going to ease up some. it's been a pretty intense week or so. then thursday is 3 tempo in middle of 8 mile run again. at some point i have to figure out how to switch over to the actual half-marathon plan i have now... it's nice running with someone though

originally on the calendar this is a steady run. we decided we were going to go easy though because we wanted to recover more before thursday's tempo. what really happened was we averaged 6:52? pace by going out "easy", getting warmed up and stuff, and then cutting down on the way back, so that by mile 5 we were at 6:35 and mile 6 was faster. Halfway through mile 7, jake cramped up a lot in his ribs and we slowed down, got water, ended up running into derek, and went home at a not fast/not slow pace for the last half mile. overall time was 48 min.

slow.. i was pretty tight

wow so i just typed a longass thing about two modes of nonrace running and then comand+left key went back on the browser. bullshit. anyway mode 1: sleeping. mode 2: awake. people try to stay in their comfort zone on workouts, and just underperform, they sleep. we slept today. also we agreed that our easy runs, regardless how good we think we feel or how fast we think we can go, are not recovery runs, like they should be. so we are no longer bringing a watch on the runs, going to go by the feeling, and save it for the workouts, where we will really put in the effort. we thought we would be able to cruise through 3 miles at 5:40 and just flopped.

2.5 warmup, 3 tempo, 2.5 cooldown

17:23 overall, not bad, not good enough though. 5:49, 5:51, 5:41. we were really surprised that the second mile was still slow, but we must have still been asleep. mile 3 we thought would be like 5:30, but it was just what we were supposed to do all along. we went out the first half at 2:52, about right, a little slow, feeling good. but from there we didn't turn it on at all to fix the pace, just kept striding. anyway, learning experience.

holy heat, batman, this run sucked. at least we kept it slow.. did 4 strides afterwards to open up after the trudging

nice long run. i think i need new shoes lol

easy, 8 small hills in the middle (as hills go)

originally supposed to be a steady run. jake and i were tired so we thought about easy running so we could do a public track meet thursday. then we decided to off a mile, on a mile, hitting like 6:30, 6:20, and 6:10 for our ons. we did that for off on off (first 3 miles), ran like 6:15 in that mile and were going pretty fast on our rest, so we decided to just do the steady run, which ended up being fast. final time around 51:30 or 50:30, idk, last 5 mile times were: 6:20, 6:15, 6:13, 6:18, 6:15

easy, recovery

this was actually more than 6.5.. ran 3.5 to a beach, met friends, played 2 intense games of ultimate frisbee with semi-random people for like 2 hours, semi-injured my already-sore groin/hip flexor area, ran 3 back, after which the groin felt better. rough day lol. jake went to the track meet today, haven't heard his results yet. there's a tempo for tomorrow, but we may alter that, having both had decently hard days today.

edit: Jake ran 4:53. said he wasn't feeling great though from tuesday still. (he ran 4:46 before we started training).

i'm feeling like our training is getting inconsistent. a lot of it is probably recovery issues. the plan has been pretty much workouts while building up mileage 3 weeks in a row with a 4th week that drops down to recover some, then repeat. we did two 46 mile weeks instead of a 50 followed by 40 mile week, though i don't think it should be that big of a deal. i don't think that the early success in the workouts was just from being semi-fresh. i had still been running awhile before the workouts started. and i think that i have gotten something out of the workouts we have done so far. the turning point was the 5k race that we followed up with runs that were too fast for recovery and then some (sub-par) workouts. i think we have started to get back on the right track since last thursday. frisbee was probably a mistake, though. it will basically screw today's (Friday's) workout for me. the up-side is that it could be seen as sort of a speed workout. thoughts? anyway, easy days will be very easy for awhile, then i'll hitch up the mileage more. this week will be like 59.5 miles or something (since i plan to run on the 7th day). maybe i'll just make it 55, and go to 60, etc after a reduced mileage week next week. more thoughts? lol

edit: i'm calling this 8 since i want my weekly mileage to look right and want today to reflect the "frisbee mileage" lol

dropped the tempo today, definitely the right move. did 8 easy, and went from being extremely tight to normal tight. a few more days i think the tightness will be gone in my hip flexor. groin seems good.

also, i know why jake didn't run as fast yesterday. he got drunk during/after the cubs game we went to on wednesday, then got more (brown-out) drunk and stayed up till 3 am and got 4 hours of sleep before the race thursday. lolcats

easy easy shakeout 3, very hot out at 2 pm. i iced my groin and hip flexors and glutes last night. once i started going today, everything felt fine, but i was going slow. good signs though i think. no longer an injury worry, more like the muscles just need to recover a lot.

today was an uber failure. it was supposed to be a long run of 12, but i was so hung over all day that i couldn't get the run in before dinner, and then after dinner when i finally got out, i felt sort of weak after the first half, and it was late, so i stopped (i was going to do two 6 mile loops starting from my house). i don't want to drink for a long time lol, ugh. i'll make up the mileage during the week though, at least.

easy run, my groin is almost fully healed!! i did strides and did my best not to compensate, like get over the subtle fear of leaning on my right leg, and i had no pain, still just not a full stride yet. just in time for tomorrow's workout! lol.. i might ice tonight. during the warmup today i felt it as like a pulled muscle going from my groin down the inside of my right thigh. but it feels better now. i ran with nimrod today (for those not haynes, yes that's his legal name; he's israeli, it means great hunter lol, biblical) (for those haynes [lol], he did that one 400s workout with us when he came to visit and didn't finish because he's in "frisbee shape, not distance [running] shape"). pro sentence lol

4x4min fartlek, 4 min rest, about 5:20 pace average (fast first one, prolly slow on third one, never over 5:25 i think). overall run in about 56:14. MY GROIN HELD OUT!!!! YAAAUSSSSS!!!! lol. this was good. hot hot hot day though, mid-80s, agh. first one was tough, especially since it was kinda faster. jake led that one, derek and i followed. i led the next one, probably was also fast, got into the leading mentality and definitely felt like i was moving. number 3 was tough, in the sun (so was 2 actually), and then the end up was up a small hill... i think we hit a wall on that one. but the last one we still were able to power out pretty well. i actually felt strong on the last one, kinda led, coulda picked it up or gone the full mile! but it was hot as hell out, stopping hurt... just glad that's done! easy week now, and 5k on saturday lol

easy run, prolly a little bit fast sometimes but was ok. AMAZING SCENERY, SHIT! lol.. it was POURING before we left, subsided once we left, stopped raining but kept up INTENSE lightning during the run, then some clouds cleared, the sun was setting, and everything looked golden/sepia, plus there were TWO rainbows in the sky. it was like a dream lol

easy, probably a little fast, ugh. i realized that driving so much is causing discomfort in my right hip flexor and glute.. cruise control has been awesome, but it doesn't work for everything unfortunately.. so i'm sort of tight in that area, bargh

easy, 6 strides afterwards

I THINK I BROKE!!!! yessssssss lol.. beat jake, who ran 17:20, bad race for him, and i caught derek for the last bit. i had him really worried until we got to the kick and i was done... partially cuz of my lack of energy, mostly my lack of speed and his being an 800 runner. but i was happy with it. derek's time was 16:55ish. since derek got top 3, he didn't qualify for age division awards, and i got first there. also, the 3 of us and nimrod (who ran to fill the team, 19:06, not bad for such little running) ran as a team and got first there too. two medals! i was just telling myself over and over, don't go to sleep now, go away pain, not right now, just staying awake. it was tough

edit: official time is 16:58! derek was at 16:57 and jake at 17:21

no run... i swapped monday's off day and sunday's long run around because of being out of town.. it was dark and i was tired, and i was pressured to see people who were in town for 2 days.. i feel bad not running the day after a race, argh, but whatever. this is supposed to be a lighter mileage week.

2 strides and a few drills afterwards. coincidentally ran into jake while with nimrod since jake didn't run yesterday, went to the cubs vs sox game instead. pretty crazy that we left at the same time and met at the halfway mark between his house and mine! he hasn't been feeling so good for a long time, thinks it's from the lifting he has to do. he emailed his coach who told him to not do workouts this week, just mileage. i decided i want to take advantage of this to run a speed workout tomorrow with nimrod. does 5x200m, full rest sound right? prolly gonna do a tempo on saturday, this time 4 miles, gah.

run will be in the afternoon. for now, did a core workout. gonna start doing these a couple times a week.

afternoon: 8 miles, ran to a track with nim, did 5x~200m with 5-6 min rest. i'm not sure how accurate the 200m were, but the times were 31.5ish, 32.8ish, 31.low, 30.08, 29.52. i didn't start looking at the decimals really till later in the workout. afterwards did 2 strides. my tendon from my groin to down the inside of my thigh is sort of acting up again, probably from the sprints and sharp turns on this weird track. bargh.

ran with jake, so you know it was prolly a little bit fast, but not too bad.

afterwards did "10 down" pushups, where basically he does 10 pushups, then he rests while i do 10, then he does 9 and i rest, i do 9 and he rests, etc, and from 3 down you just hold in the up position. the groin/hip flexor area was ok during the run, but still can feel it, definitely not great yet.

afterwards i showered, and at the end of it i gradually cooled the water to only cold water (it got SO cold! no reason for a shower to get that cold except for this purpose), then used the water as like an ice spray for my legs for awhile. before getting out i warmed the water up a little bit and thawed out. i think that helped some, we shall see.